THE FIRST TRIP, OR KETHER,

From Dealey Plaza
To Watergate...

The Purpe Sage opened his mouth and moved his tongue
and so spake to them he said:
The Earth quakes and the Heavens rattle; the beasts
of nature flock together and the nations of men flock
apart; volcanoes usher up heat while elsewhere water be-
comes ice and melts; and the on other days it just rains.
Indeed do many things come to pass.
- Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst, K.S.C.,
"The Book of Predictions."The Honest Book of Truth

It was the year when they finally immenentized the Eschaton. On April 1, the world's great powers came closer to nuclear war than ever before, all because of an obscure island named Fernando Poo. By the time international affairs returned to their normal cold-war level, some wits were calling it the moste tasteless April Fool's joke in history. I happen to know to recount them in a menner that will make sense to most readers. For instance, I am not even sure who I am, and my embarrassment on that matter makes me wonder if you will believe anything I reveal. Wors yer, I am at the moment very concious of a squirrel - in Central Park, just of Sixty-eight Street, in New York City - that is leaping from one tree to another, and I think that happens on the night of April 23 (or is it the morning of April 24?), but fitting the squirrel together with Fernando Poo is, for the present, beyond my powers. I beg your tolerance. There is nothing I can do to make things any easier for any of us, and you will have to accept being addressed by a disembodied voice just as I accept the compulsion to speak even though I am painfully aware that I am talking to an invisible, perhaps nonexistent, audience. Wise men have regarded the earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise and not merely intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises. Is it too much if I ask, tentatively, that we agree to look upon it as a crcus, a touring carnival wandering about the sun for a record season of four billion years and producing new monsters and miracles, hoaxews and bloody mishaps, wonders and blunders, but never quite entertaining the customers well enough to prevent them from leaving, one by one, and returning to their homes for a ling and bored winter's sleep under the dust? Then, say, for a while at least, that I have found an identity as ringmaster; but that crown sits uneasily on my head (if I have a head) and I must warn you that the troupe is small for a universe size and many of us have to double or triple our stints, so you can expect me back in many other guises. Indeed do many things come to pass.

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Before his eyes she turned red, yellow, black, brown, young, middle-aged, a child, an old woman, a Norwegian blonde, a Sicilian brunette, a wild-eyed Greek woman, a tall Ashanti, a slant-eyed Masai, a Japanese, a Chinese, a Vietnamese, and on and on and on.
The paleface kept turning colors, the way people do when you're on peyote. Now he looked almost like an Indian. That made it easier to tlak to him. Why shouldn't people turn colors? All the trouble in the world came from the fact they usually stay the same color. James nodded profoundly. As usual, peyote had brought him a big Truth. If whites and blacks and Indians were turning colors all the time, there wouldn't be any hate in the world, because nobody would know which people to hate.